Infideli-phone: Why Japanese adulterers prefer Fujitsu’s flip phones

Even though we’re now living in 2013 and smartphones are as ubiquitous as ever, a certain segment of Japanese society — namely adulterers — has chosen to stick with their old flip phones. Yeah, it’s still pretty cool to answer your phone by casually flipping it open, but adulterers don’t stick with flip phones in order to attract mistresses by being super cool, but because the older Fujitsu F-Series phones provide some helpful privacy features.

Nicknamed “infidelity phones” in Japan (seemingly defeating the purpose of owning one), the F-Series phones offer something most modern-day smartphones do not: an extra privacy layer. Somewhat similar to going invisible on a buddy list, the privacy feature makes it so relays from sensitive contacts –missed calls, text messages, emails, etc. — barely appear on the phone at all. If a contact is marked as private, their communique will show up as a subtle change to the phone’s UI, such as the shape of the phone’s battery symbol slightly changing. If the message is ignored, it doesn’t show up in the phone’s logs.

When an adulterer is with one of his mistresses/her gentlemen and needs to quickly turn the privacy mode on or off, a secret key combination does the trick.

The privacy features, which debuted in 2002, were simply intended for the purpose of stronger security, which is a legitimate concern in a modern world where we not only read and respond to work-related messages on our phones, but also purchase apps and order food.

Granted, a simple app or two could replace the built-in F-Series privacy features (and, if those exist, this blogger is proud to say he doesn’t know about them). However, Fujitsu is beginning to add the message-concealing and UI-changing features to some of its new smartphones, but reportedly in the form of a first party app that requires a separate contacts list.

It would seem that the old, infamous internet cheating staple, the Ashley Madison adultery site, probably could’ve teamed up with Fujitsu at some point to form a very happy relationship (that either party might end up cheating on).